The swift Republican election of a new U.S. House leadership team won’t heal the party’s divisions though lawmakers say it does provide insulation from a challenge to Speaker John Boehner after the midterm election.

Republicans considering running for president were quick to embrace House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan ’s plan to shrink the U.S. budget deficit , a blueprint likely to frame the debate over federal spending heading into next year’s elections and spur Democratic attacks.

President Barack Obama is using a battle over the stalled nomination of his candidate to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and extension of a payroll tax cut to campaign as a populist defender of the middle class.

Google Inc. is moving its Washington office closer to Capitol Hill after spending $18.2 million on lobbying, more than Northrop Grumman Corp. and enough to rank the technology company as the eighth-biggest advocacy spender.

House Speaker John Boehner lost support from more than one-fourth of his Republican colleagues as the chamber rejected a $939 billion agricultural-policy bill, the latest in a series of embarrassments handed to him by his own party.